Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people in Psychology,

#4151

Thomas Wadden

#134991

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Thomas A. Wadden is a clinical psychologist and educator who is known for his research on the treatment of obesity by methods that include lifestyle modification, pharmacotherapy, and bariatric surgery. He is the Albert J. Stunkard Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and former director of the university's Center for Weight and Eating Disorders. He also is visiting professor of psychology at Haverford College.

#4152

Alec Roy

#179879

Overall Influence

#4153

Harold M. Schroder

#175918

Overall Influence

1923 - 2013 (90 years)

Harold Martin Schroder was professor of psychology at Princeton University who conducted research into the so-called 'High Performance Leadership Competencies'. Their validation across public and private organisations was carried out by Schroder and his colleagues initially while he was Professor of Management at the University of South Florida and later in American and British corporations, including RBS.

#4154

Marie Hartwig

#98582

Overall Influence

1906 - 2001 (95 years)

Marie Dorothy Hartwig , known by the nickname "Pete", was an American professor of physical education at the University of Michigan, the university's first associate director of athletics for women, and a lifelong advocate for education, women's sports, and intercollegiate athletics. She was the second woman inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor.

#4155

Ivory A. Toldson

Ivory A. Toldson

#100989

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Ivory Achebe Toldson is an American academic and author. He is a professor of Counseling Psychology at Howard University, national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education, and executive editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Research, published by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. He is formally the president of Quality Education for Minorities. He served as the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities under President Barack Obama.

#4156

Steven G. Vandenberg

#73858

Overall Influence

1915 - 1992 (77 years)

Steven Vandenberg was a behavior geneticist who immigrated to the US after the Second World War, obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1955. From 1960 to 1967 he worked at the University of Louisville School of Medicine as director of the Louisville Twin Study. In 1970 he moved to the Institute of Behavior Genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he remained until his retirement. Vandenberg received many honors and awards during his lifetime, including being the first recipient of the Behavior Genetics Association's Dobzhansky Career Award in 1977. Vandenberg ...

#4157

Jane Ritchie

#148289

Overall Influence

1936 - 2023 (87 years)

Jane Ritchie was a New Zealand psychology academic and expert of child-raising. She was an emeritus professor at the University of Waikato. She was the first woman to graduate with a PhD in psychology from a New Zealand university.

#4158

Suzanne Purdy

#177913

Overall Influence

Suzanne Carolyn Purdy is a New Zealand psychology academic specialising in auditory processing and hearing loss. She is currently a full professor and head of the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland.

#4159

Barbara Curbow

#176436

Overall Influence

Barbara Anne Curbow is an American social/health psychologist. She is a former Professor and chair of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on health disparities in treatment decision-making for adjuvant chemotherapy among colorectal cancer patients, use of alternative tobacco products, tobacco control, and cancer caregiving.

#4160

Svein Mossige

#176616

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Svein Mossige is a Norwegian psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oslo and is noted for his research on violence against children and child sexual abuse. Career He obtained the cand.psychol. degree at the University of Oslo in 1974 and the dr.psychol. degree at the same university in 1998. He formerly worked as a clinical psychologist. From 1996 to 2010, he was a senior researcher, research professor and research director at Norwegian Social Research. He was appointed as Professor of Psychology at the University of Oslo in 2011. He still holds a part-time position as research professor at Norwegian Social Research.

#4161

Helmut Kentler

#127854

Overall Influence

1928 - 2008 (80 years)

Helmut Kentler was a German psychologist, sexologist and professor of social education at the University of Hannover. From the late 1960s until the early 1990s, with the authorization and financial support of the Berlin Senate, Kentler placed neglected youth as foster children in the homes of single pedophile fathers with the ostensible purpose of resocializing them, while explicitly encouraging sexual contact between them. This project was later dubbed the "Kentler Experiment" or the "Kentler Project."

#4162

K. Daniel O'Leary

#180164

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

K. Daniel O'Leary is an American psychologist who is Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at Stony Brook University. Much of his research has focused on the causes and prevention of intimate partner violence, as well as the long-term persistence of romantic love between married partners. In 1969, he and his wife Susan O'Leary, also a professor at Stony Brook, started a program there dedicated to counteracting antisocial behavior in children. He has served as president of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy, the New York chapter of the Association of Family and Concil...

#4163

Brian Rogers

#178858

Overall Influence

Brian John Rogers is a psychologist and retired academic. He was Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford between 1996 and 2012. Career Rogers attended the University of Bristol, graduating with BSc in psychology in 1969; he then completed a PhD there in 1976. In 1973, he was appointed to a lectureship in psychology at the University of St Andrews, where he remained until he was elected a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1984. In 1996, he was awarded the title of Professor of Experimental Psychology by the University of Oxford. He resigned his fellowship in 1998 to raise his young son, but retained his university position.

#4164

Lyle Jones

#177368

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Lyle Vincent Jones was an American psychologist known for his pioneering work in psychometrics. He was an early architect of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Early life and education Jones was born in Grandview, Washington on March 11, 1924. He began taking classes at Reed College in 1942. A year later, immediately after completing his freshman year, he left Reed to begin active duty in the United States Army Air Corps. He continued to serve in the Air Corps until 1946, when he attended the University of Washington to complete his bachelor's degree. He then received his master's degree, also from the University of Washington, before receiving his Ph.D.

#4165

Gwynne Nettler

#168802

Overall Influence

1913 - 2007 (94 years)

Gwynne Nettler was a Canadian sociologist, psychologist, and movie stuntman who taught at the University of Alberta from 1963 to 1978. Biography When Nettler was young, he acted as a stuntman in multiple Tarzan films, as well as the original Mutiny on the Bounty film. He was also a talented swimmer, and was on a water polo team. He was educated at the University of California, Los Angeles , Claremont College , and Stanford University . Early in his career, he worked as the senior clinical psychologist at the Nevada State Department of Health, and as an industrial psychologist in Mexico City, Mexico.

#4166

John Bonvillian

#171180

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

John D. Bonvillian was a psychologist and associate professor - emeritus in the Department of Psychology and the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the principal developer of Simplified Signs, a manual sign communication system designed to be easy to form, easy to understand and easy to remember. He is also known for his research contributions to the study of sign language, child development, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition.

#4167

H. Hill Goldsmith

#76386

Overall Influence

Harold Hill Goldsmith is an American developmental psychologist and behavior geneticist. He is the Mark and Ilene Laufman Family Professor and the Antoine Bascom Professor & Leona Tyler Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also the Chair of the University's Department of Psychology and coordinator of the Social and Affective Processes Group at the University's Waisman Center. His research focuses on multiple topics in developmental psychology, such as children's emotional development, temperament, and autism spectrum disorders. He first joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1992 with his wife, Morton Ann Gernsbacher.

#4168

Diane Follingstad

#179545

Overall Influence

Diane R. Follingstad is an American psychologist and author, currently the Women's Circle Endowment professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Research on Violence Against Women at the University of Kentucky She was previously a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of South Carolina.

#4169

Julie Williams

#100334

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Julie Williams CBE FLSW FMedSci is Professor of Neuropsychological Genetics at Cardiff University and was Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales from 2013 to 2017. She is one of the world's leading contributors to Alzheimer's research.

#4170

James C. Renick

#52453

Overall Influence

1948 - 2021 (73 years)

James Carmichael Renick was an American academic, who served as Chancellor of University of Michigan–Dearborn and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Renick served also as the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Jackson State University in Jackson Mississippi. He resigned this position on October 5, 2015.

#4171

Louis Matzel

#179358

Overall Influence

Louis D. Matzel is a professor of psychology at Rutgers University. His research is in the fields of behavioral neuroscience and differential psychology, with a focus on individual differences in intelligence. He is also noted for his criticisms of the concept of long-term potentiation. He was a recipient of the James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellowship from the Association for Psychological Science in 1999–2000, and he has been a fellow of the Eastern Psychological Association since 2009.

#4172

Tracy L. Cross

#34431

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Tracy L. Cross is an educational psychologist and developmental scientist. Since 2009 he has held the Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education endowed chair at The College of William & Mary, has been the executive director for William & Mary's Center for Gifted Education , and founded the Institute for Research on the Suicide of Gifted Students in 2012. Previously he served as the George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Gifted Studies Ball State University , the founder and executive director of both the Center for Gifted Studies and Talen...

#4173

Ted Selker

#180420

Overall Influence

#4174

Jem Spectar

#84327

Overall Influence

Jem Spectar is the president of the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown . Previously, he had been provost/vice president for academic affairs and professor at Western Oregon University; associate provost and professor at the University of Scranton; director of studies and lecturer at Princeton University; and assistant dean and associate professor of law at the University of La Verne College of Law. Spectar earned his Bachelor of Arts in international studies at the University of La Verne, an MBA from Frostburg State University, a Master of Arts from The George Washington University, the Jur...

#4175

Gordon Logan

#133436

Overall Influence

Gordon Logan is the Centennial Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. A cognitive and mathematical psychologist, Logan is well known for his work on cognitive control and inhibition of cognitive and motor activity, divided attention and the nature of the human brain’s processing limitations, and the fundamental characterization of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. He has also done extensive research on the hierarchical control of skilled copytyping, which he views as a useful model for hierarchically organized complex human skills in general. He collaborates on resea...

#4176

Candice Feiring

#177107

Overall Influence

Dr. Candice Feiring is a Senior Research Scholar at the College of New Jersey and has been a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She is the Director of the Center for Youth Relationship and Development. Her research focuses on processes related to adjustment in sexually abused youth and adolescent romantic relationships. Dr. Feiring has been honored with a William T. Grant Faculty Scholars award and has been the recipient of federally funded grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, Department of Justice, and Department of Education.

#4177

Judy Margaret Parr

#129705

Overall Influence

Judith Margaret Parr is a New Zealand educational psychology academic. She is a full professor at the University of Auckland. Academic career After a secondary education at Matamata College and an undergraduate at the University of Auckland, Parr did a 1989 PhD at Australian National University titled "Revision in writing: cognitive and linguistic aspects". She then returned to Auckland and became a full professor in 2011.

#4178

Catherine Chesla

#118525

Overall Influence

Catherine "Kit" Ann Chesla is an American nurse who is Professor Emeritus and former Thelma Shobe Endowed Chair at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her research has considered families and chronic illness.

#4179

Henrik Anckarsäter

#151577

Overall Influence

1966 - 2021 (55 years)

Henrik Anckarsäter was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, as Pär Henrik Georg Söderström, was Professor of Forensic Psychiatry and co-founder of the Centre for Ethics, Law and Mental Health at the University of Gothenburg, and a consulting psychiatrist at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital. He has been guest professor at the Université Paris XII, France, and Lund University, Sweden, and board director of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health and on the board of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. His research focus included child neuropsychiatry, including autism spectrum conditions, and the development of personality and identity in young adult years.

#4180

Milton Schwebel

#172927

Overall Influence

1914 - 2013 (99 years)

Milton Schwebel was an American psychologist known for his pioneering work in peace psychology. This included research on the psychological effects of fear of nuclear war. He was a faculty member at the School of Education at New York University for eighteen years, where his positions included professor and department chair. He later taught at Rutgers University, where he served as dean of the Graduate School of Education for ten years. He was a founder of the American Psychological Association 's Division 48, the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, and the founding editor-in-chief its official journal, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.

#4181

Ellen Hamaker

#173777

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Ellen Louise "E.L." Hamaker is a Dutch-American psychologist, and statistician. Since 2018 she has been a full professor at Utrecht University, holding the chair Longitudinal Data Analysis at the Department of Methodology and Statistics. Her work focuses on the development of statistical models for the analysis of intensive longitudinal data in psychology, mainly within the frameworks of structural equation modeling and time series analysis.

#4182

Jonathan Dollimore

#77123

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Jonathan G Dollimore is a British philosopher and critic in the fields of Renaissance literature , gender studies, queer theory , history of ideas, death studies, decadence, and cultural theory. He is the author of four academic books, a memoir, and numerous academic articles. With Alan Sinfield he was the co-editor of and key contributor to Political Shakespeare, and the co-originator of the critical practice known as cultural materialism. Dollimore is credited with making major interventions in debates on sexuality and desire, Renaissance literary culture, art and censorship, and cultural ...

#4183

Jehannine Austin

#167981

Overall Influence

Jehannine Claire Austin is a Canadian neuropsychiatric geneticist and a genetic counselor. They are a professor at the University of British Columbia and Executive Director of the Provincial Health Services Authority's BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services Research Institute. In 2012, Austin founded the world’s first specialist psychiatric genetic counselling service.

#4184

Barbara Gillam

#137075

Overall Influence

Barbara Jean Gillam is an Australian psychologist. She is Emeritus and Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales. Gillam received a PhD from the Australian National University in 1964 for her thesis "Space perception with aniseikonic lenses: A study of stereoscopic vision".

#4185

Leslie DeChurch

#178978

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Leslie A. DeChurch is an American academic and expert on leadership and team dynamics. She is Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences. She directs the ATLAS lab at Northwestern University, and is former President of the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research .

#4186

Alice Theadom

#177336

Overall Influence

Alice Theadom is an English-born New Zealand psychologist and academic. As of 2020 she is a full professor and Rutherford Discovery Fellow at Auckland University of Technology . Academic career Theadom completed a BSc at the University of Essex, followed by an MSc in Health Psychology at the University of Surrey. She moved to New Zealand to take up a position as associate professor at Auckland University of Technology from May 2009 and completed a PhD at the same university in 2011.

#4187

Sherry Wu

#172327

Overall Influence

Sherry Jueyu Wu is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management. in Westwood, California and the 2020 recipient of the Cialdini Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology for her field research in group dynamics and authority. She conducts large-scale field experiments concerning group influence over long-lasting behavioral changes and decision processes under resource disparity and social inequality.

#4188

Anat Brunstein Klomek

#129063

Overall Influence

Anat Brunstein-Klomek is an Israeli psychologist who is an associate professor at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. She holds an adjunct position at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her research considers depression, suicide and bullying.

#4189

Michael Kyrios

#116866

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Michael or Mike Kyrios is a Greek-Australian clinical psychologist. He is an emeritus professor at Flinders University, after serving as Vice-President and Executive Dean at the university's College of Education, Psychology and Social Work.

#4190

Elizabeth Levy Paluck

#181008

Overall Influence

#4191

Esther Fischer-Homberger

Esther Fischer-Homberger

#46050

Overall Influence

1940 - 2019 (79 years)

Esther Fischer-Homberger was a Swiss psychiatrist and medical historian. Her research focused on the history of psychiatry, psychosomatics and forensic medicine as well as the medical history of women.

#4192

Darby Saxbe

#171440

Overall Influence

Darby Saxbe is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, who researches stress within the context of relationships. Research interests She researches stress within a close relationship context, with a focus on the transition to parenthood as a nexus of neural, hormonal, behavioral and psychological change. She has also studied hormonal linkage within couples and families, finding that partners with more strongly correlated cortisol levels report more relationship distress and that expectant couples may show linked levels of testosterone which in turn predict paternal relationship investment.

#4193

Jacqueline Gottlieb

#181137

Overall Influence

Jacqueline Gottlieb is an American neuroscientist who is a professor of neuroscience and the Principal Investigator at the Columbia University Zuckerman Institute. Her research considers the mechanisms that underlie cognitive function.

#4194

Forrest W. Young

#172293

Overall Influence

1940 - 2006 (66 years)

Forrest Wesley Young is a professor emeritus of quantitative psychology at the University of North Carolina and former President of the Psychometric Society. He is known for his contributions to multidimensional scaling. He is the developer of ViSta a software for data visualization.

#4195

John Paul De Cecco

#172738

Overall Influence

1925 - 2017 (92 years)

John Paul De Cecco was an American academic. He was a professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Homosexuality from 1975 to 2009, and a "pioneer of sexuality studies."

#4196

Rebecca Pillai Riddell

#127358

Overall Influence

Rebecca Rita Elizabeth Riddell is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a basic-behavioural scientist. She is a full professor at York University and Tier 2 York Research Chair in Pain and Mental Health.

#4197

Sapna Cheryan

#177080

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Sapna Cheryan is an American social psychologist. She is a Full professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. Early life and education Cheryan was born to financial aid administrator mother Leela Cheryan and research professor father Munir Cheryan in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up, she became interested in topics revolving around race, gender, and equality. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and American Studies before enrolling at Stanford University for her PhD. As a graduate student, she began to notice that the atmosphere of working or learning environments could directly influence ones choice to join the field.

#4198

Sharon Beder

#37826

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Sharon Beder is an environmentalist and former professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. Her research has focused on how power relationships are maintained and challenged, particularly by corporations and professions. She has written 11 books, and many articles, book chapters and conference papers, as well as designing teaching resources and educational websites.

#4199

David Hambrick

#177648

Overall Influence

David Zachary Hambrick is a psychology professor at Michigan State University, known for his research on the effects of practice on proficiency in various skills. Hambrick's research has concluded that practice is important in explaining ability in fields such as chess, music, and academics, but less so than argued by other psychologists, notably K. Anders Ericsson. Hambrick contends that, in addition to amount of practice, working memory capacity is associated with better performance on a wide variety of tasks.

#4200

Tomas Tranströmer

Tomas Tranströmer

#2259

Overall Influence

1931 - 2015 (84 years)

Tomas Gösta Tranströmer was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Tranströmer's work is also characterized by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routine of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. He has been described as a Christian poet.

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